Does a .ca domain have just as good a chance showing up in SERPs as a .com regardless of the location the search is being performed and aside all other SEO factors?
Yes, Google has a high regard for .ca. Where your server is physically located has more to do with the geotargetting of results than the domain extension.
Assuming you are correct in this case the server is in the US so it should have no problem for SERPS. Thanks. Any other views on this?
Well, yes, but there is, I think, more to it than this. What I mean is that there are differences in how you're likely to appear in the SERPs, especially if, like me, you're a non-US site owner. I'm by no means the only one of my kind who's puzzled (and sometimes frustrated) by how I do and don't turn up in searches of the web as opposed to pages from Canada. In fact, in the WebProWorld forum there have been ongoing posts from Australia, UK, and Canada about how the results have little if any similarity in web or from searches for precisely the same query. And it doesn't seem to matter whether you're talking .com or .ca or are hosted in the US or your own country. For example, my site is hosted on my doorstep in Ontario and it's a .com; there are competitors with the exact same status; and there are competitors with .ca sites hosted both locally and in the US. But there's no seeming logic, let alone consistency, as to who appears where. In my own case, I do nicely (thank you, Google) in web searches but am rarely if ever found in pages from Canada. In contrast, my competitors tend to turn up in reverse -- invariably in pages from Canada and seldom if at all in web searches. Thank heavens for AdWords, I say! This at least allows me to show when searchers use the from Canada option. But is there any explanation? Not that I've ever seen. Nor does it seem likely to be forthcoming from the Google gods. Perhaps some of the difference lies with the data centres that searchers reach, and I have begun to recognize that most of my visitors are outside my immediate locale, whereas my competitors seems more likely to attract "local yokels." Fortunately, I'm none the worse for it all and maybe my focus on Buyers Only (and let sellers go hang!) is an influencing factor. All told, though, it's certainly a puzzlement! Duncan
Well I guess I'm just going to have to dive in and see how it goes, thanks for the replies Google just does seem to have a mind of it's own doesn't it.
I've asked this question a few times and was told that the top spots are always dominated by .com, .net, .org, but part of the reason is because they have been around much longer and these sites are more established. From what I've been told, the SE do not differentiate between the various TLD